


At First

by Aicosu



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alliteration, Complete, Enemies to mostly still enemies, F/F, Lots of that, Mercy meets moira, Obsession, Obsessive Behavior, One Shot, One-Sided Attraction, One-Sided Relationship, Origin Story, Stalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 15:30:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14240316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aicosu/pseuds/Aicosu
Summary: Mercy meets Moira and realizes she's been stalking her.





	At First

**Author's Note:**

  * For [purple_satan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_satan/gifts).



She’d started it. At first.

She did! She knew what she had been doing the entire time, had probably been planning it for months even before they first spoke. This was all just circumstance, or, consequences to circumstance. Not coincidence. It was calculated consciousness. Coercion! A corrupted set of carefully laid plans to corner her.

Obviously.

It had started in December, in the cold of a London afternoon, at the quarterly MedX Conference.

She had just finished her keystone speech, _she_ , herself, Angela, had filtered through a crowd of confidantes, peers seeking to confer and conversate about the new cornerstone tech she had just unveiled. Biotic regeneration in singular cells, catalyzed by calcium stimulants. A normal occurrence (the conference, not the research.)

She’d shaken hands and had been caught in a trap. A spring snapping; not with iron jaws but with cold fingers.

“Dr Ziegler, a pleasure. Your speech was brilliant.”

“Thank you.”

“If you have time this weekend I would love to chat.”

“Oh, well, your—,”

“Dr. O’Deorain. Maybe drinks? Tonight?”

Angela stopped trying to look through the crowd to the exit and finally looked at the man (woman, actually) in front of her.

She had to look up to do so.

They were tall, tall and thin. Tall enough to block out the fluorescent lights of the lecture hall but not wide enough to block the halo effect of the bulbs. Their bright ginger hair almost looked white like that.

“Oh,”

“I‘m what you might call, a big fan.”

_A big fan._

See? It was obvious.

Angela shook her head before she even opened her lips.

“I’m not—”

“Busy? I understand you're most likely headed back to Gibraltar soon, no?”

Yes. Of course, she would be. And there it is again. She hadn’t seen it then though, she had said nothing, taking a moment to realize there were still other doctors and directors around them, waiting, listening.

They were still holding hands too. Her and O’Deorain.

“Forgive me, perhaps it's a bit forward to ask for the secrets of that brilliant mind so soon.”

Long nails scraped the pulse of her wrist before letting go.

“An honor.”  They bowed. It was awkward.

Angela stared at crisp shoulders lower, taking in the sight of red hair level with her hips.

They left.

 _Moira_ left.

She’d learn the name later. A full two months later. Two months too soon. Too fast. Too quick to call a coincidence. A tell, a clue, obviously. A red flag that had been bright enough to set Angela in motion.

Moira O’Deorain was published that month. A full 30 pages of work. Angela read all of it. Pouring over every word as if the serifs hanging from each typed letter were the nicked lines of the woman’s curled smile or the slices of those fingers that had gripped her so pointedly.

The research did the same.

Biotic Cellular regeneration in singular cells on the natural occurrence of chemical imbalance. A caustic approach. Rendering the body to a corrosive state in order to fix it?

It was callous.

_And copied._

The clack of her heels down the grey of Gibraltar hallways was like the symbols on drums in an empty concert.

“Could you look at this for me?”

“Ah! Angela!” A few pressure canisters clattered against the tiles as Dr. Zhou’s finger slid through her work, slipping as she turned to the open door. Others in the engineering shop all stopped, quiet mumbling going silent as they all looked up. “ _Ni xià dào wole_ Angela, really—”

Had she been loud? Her eyes glazed over the people staring at her before she took the last few steps to Mei’s workstation.

“I’m sorry— but could you look at this for me?” 

Mei’s shoulders seemed to slump in time with the slip of her glasses.   
  
“You know I am no good at medical.” She sniffed, “Or grammar.”   
  
“It’s not about that, it’s about plagiarism!”   
  
Mei’s nose crinkled as her body shrunk back into the creaking rolling chair beneath her.

That was louder then Angela had meant it to be. She tightened her throat to be quieter.

“It’s about copyright, really, about content confidentiality. For Overwatch.” The carefully paperclipped stack of O’Deorains ‘work’ felt heavy in the cup of her hands. “A doctor— well she’s not a doctor, not in that sense, I don’t think— has written— stolen— has perhaps _copied_ my research.”

She could feel eyes on her. The lab interns and agents no doubt wondering why their chief medical officer seemed _so—_

Mei looked… dubious.

“Could you just take a look at it, please, I just need someone to see—”  
  
“Are you alright Angela? This is so very sudden.”   
  
“Just take a look—” Angela laid the papers down on the workstation, smoothing and rotating them around to cautiously slide them past the blueprint papers and coffee mugs.

“It’s made you very upset,” Mei said, not moving to the papers.

“No, no— no,” She shook her head, staring at the paper before shoving her hands into her lab coat pockets. She straightened her back and cocked her brow. It hurt her expression. So she tried smiling, sitting, and then frowning. “I’m not upset I’m just… concerned.”

“Okay.”

It wasn’t a quick read.

In fact, it wasn’t until Angela had quietly diagnosed Mei’s occasional pause to sniff not as a cold from a change in temperature, but allergies from the half-eaten croissant shoved aside on the counter. Almonds.

“You really shouldn’t eat that Mei.”

Mei’s eyes crinkled with shame even as her teeth showed in her smile. “I know but it is so good!”

“You’re going to make yourself sick.”

“I think it’s okay to be a little sick sometimes.” Dr. Zhou said idly, flipping another page in tandem with Angela crossing her legs a bit impatiently. She even sounded stuffy and congested.

“What do you think so far?”

“It all sounds so complicated.” She noted, dropping the papers but continuing to read. “Injecting chemicals to create wounds? Maybe a little mean but if a patient is already in pain then—”  
  
“No, not the work, the duplication.”

“Oh.”

Angela shifted, fingers curling around the edge of the work desk “Doesn’t it seem a little too close for comfort? She’s taken my concept—”

“This has been tested?”  
  
“No, it’s a proposal.”   
  
“Wasn’t yours just a proposal too?”   
  
“Yes, but, no, see, that’s— mine was published under an annual review for the community to see Overwatch's’ progress on the medical front.”   
  
“Can’t the community use it to further their own scientific work then?” Mei asked, hiding behind a raised coffee cup. Angela narrowed her eyes at its ceramic cartoon face.   
  
“No that’s not— Yes, they can, but she’s— she’s not a part of the community!”

“You have never met her?”

“No, no, I have, I just—”

Mei was staring.

The rest of the workroom had gotten quiet.

Angela stood, suddenly, chair squealing sharply as she reached over to shuffle the science reports out of Mei’s hands, stoically shaking off the stares around the room.

“Angela, wait!”

“No, nevermind, it’s so silly, you’re right, forget it.”

“I just don’t think you should think too hard about it. There are always more discoveries to be made.”   
  
“Yes, it’s silly, yes.”   
  
It wasn’t ego. It wasn’t about the discoveries. It wasn’t about the science.

It was about the wording. The cadence. The spacing in between the paragraphs, the meticulously paralleled periods, the truncating data, the abbreviated control groups and the sound of following footsteps Moira O’Deorain’s research seemed to make.

Mei couldn’t see that. A lot of her coworkers couldn’t or wouldn’t.

Even if she tried to forget.

At first.

Which she did. Try— honestly.

But research had to be done. For reassurance. A required step to reason with herself.

Random searches of the Ireland-born “doctor” resulted in the simplest of information. A list of resume skills, a receipt for a few diplomas. Nothing worth reacting too. She was born of Newry, and relocated for school a few times, before settling in to educate others herself in her home country. Her name headlined only when she published herself. She worked alone. No teams, no sponsor. No public-big pharmacy names backing her.

Nothing to reign her in.

It was worrisome.

Responses to the publishing were varied, but only ranging from suspicious to downright accusatory. No one could reproduce Moira O’Deorain’s results. No one could even replicate her recorded parameters. Her control groups didn’t match her renderings. Her dosages were impossible to administer and yet there they were. The math was correct, the formulas perfect. But things were missing. As if she was writing a song from scratch, with theoretical notes and missing refrains. A hypothetical masterpiece.

It made for bad receptions, which showed in her lack of reach across the medical world. Either she was being dismissed as a disreputable liar or an unethical one. Or both.

It was the rats. Or rabbits.

Angela suspected that wasn’t at all where Moira was producing her rhetoric. 

Other than that, the only other thing that came to light in the dark of Angela’s after-hours office, was the low resolution of red hair and a rigid stance, from snapshots taken at class lectures and a regulatory faculty photo. Both of which she read over as if they were articles themselves. Angela remembered and memorized the traits she had only rushed over months ago.

A sharp Greek nose and narrow looking eyes; right-clicked and renamed into a folder she left unregistered in the back recesses of her computer.

They would have remained there too. It hadn’t been her urge to do anything rash.

It was just a reaction!

And a rightful one—How else was she supposed to reveal the truth after running into the woman on a requisition effort in Regensburg? It was ridiculous. And wrong.

Overwatch had requested she take the trip to order and retrieve new equipment. It was sudden, last minute. And there was no way the two of them could have randomly, indiscriminately been reserved at the same obscure, unremarkable restaurant.

“Dr. Ziegler.”

To say Angela was surprised was an understatement. And she was immediately looking around tables as if the turning machinations of this gross strategy would appear in the air around them.

“What a pleasure it is to see you—”

She was sitting, Moira was, across from her like a revered friend of some kind that required no invite.

“Are you here on work?”

How incriminating! How deceitful. Angela said nothing, glaring reproachfully, sliding her lonely glass of Rosé close enough to pick up and bolt with, in case a hasty retreat was needed.

She looked regal. Formal. Dressed in deep mulberry purples with orchid accented nails. Arsenic with a candy wrapper, Moira looked exactly like what she was. Swallow and sharp. Even the sight of her made it all make sense.

Slight hands and a sneaky looking grin, lips stretching in a twitch as if secretly trying not to smile. She knew exactly what she was scheming, sitting there, fingers scratching along the edge of the table and eyes sliding here and there as she continued speaking.

“You know of the Taving Chemical Center here? I’m visiting their facilities for a few supplies.”

How suspicious. And how convenient. An alibi? An excuse? Some sorry reason for showing up in the exact city she had been in. Disgusting.

“...I hope I’m not intruding.” Moira tried, not-smile stopping as the silence between them continued. “Or am I offending?”

Angela shifted. 

“Or… are you just shy?” Moira asked and Angela watched the slyness slink back in. “Is this because of my letter?”   
  
“What letter?”

The silverware clinked across the table as she sat up and Moira’s height straightened fully in surprise.

“I had sent you a letter, along with a copy of my latest publication—”

“When?”

“Only a month ago. Perhaps I’ve used the wrong address. You Overwatch Heroes are hard to reach unless one is sending fan mail. Though I don’t think my letter could be classified as anything but that—”

See! _You Heroes are hard to reach_. Something like that isn’t said to a stranger. So could it be more obvious?

“It was something simple, the work, but my letter— I was hoping—” Moira sighed, stretched, stalled. Slipping her hands into her lap and sliding her tongue along her lips. “We could meet. Have drinks.”

Everything else seemed far away. Suspended from reality. Angela nothing but a singular solitary person under the scrutiny of this— _obsessed—_

“But… you’re busy, I assume.” Moira’s lashes hooded her lids, brows struggling with a forceful look of sympathy that looked more like a sneer. “Here.”

Angela crossed hers legs once, twice, and thrice, as O’Deorain scrambled with items in her satchel, still slung on her too slight shoulders, scrawling longways on a slip of paper before sliding it over. Another red flag in a slow building stack of them.

“My number, should you change your mind.”

She stood then, Moira did, nails scraping through sandstone locks and smiling wistfully as if this entire ‘spontaneous’ exchange wasn’t some sick self-serving conspiracy.

She watched her exit. Satisfied and spurred. She had been right, surely?

The scribbled number was immediately translated. Seven digits saved cybernetically and then systematically renamed _‘spiegal,’_ the Swiss equivalent for what this stalking, superficial, _snake_ deserved.

After that, it was a spiral.

But so was she!

Moira was not an easy suspect to keep tabs on.

She did most of it alone.

At first.

But she’d needed help.

It was honestly obligatory. She had to handle any hostile happenings with some sort of heedful heads-up. Honest.

Her having sought out Blackwatch specifically wasn’t anything underhanded. It was habit. She simply had more hands-on history with the more harbored team than the heralded one.

“I don’t know Angela, you know I’d do anything for you but—”

“McCree, Jesse, please, she’s a hazard to me.”

“Has she hurt you?”

 _Hurt._ Her face heated. No. However, hurt could have many meanings. Hypothetically, the doctor had harked her, harrowed her, hyper-focused her in a way that had her on edge. Enough to deter any more hesitation. She had to halt the inevitable harm before it began.

“Maybe you should talk to Gabriel. He would know what to do,” “No, please,” She inhaled, heavy and heady, hands grabbing hold of hands, “Jesse, you know how busy he gets. This isn’t a big deal, it’s just a precaution.”

He frowned at her, handsome face heavy with his doubts, hurried to suspicion at her hasty hindering. She hid her harshness, and tried once more,“I only hope to feel safe and happy in my own home.”  

He huffed, head hung, unable to hold fast against her inherent wholeheartedness.

It was only a handful of days before he had a healthy amount of information from his hired hunt.

Moira O’Deorain hid more then her hard-to-place haphazard experiment details. Half of which were indeed; human, not rats or hamsters. She was also hot-headed, with harassment on record, hefty reports from HR departments that described her as anything but humble.

High-strung, hyper-controlling, and dishonorable, she was prone to harebrained hypotheses and radical, hobbled-together, happenstance science. A humiliation to her former sponsors and a hard-sell to any future ones.

It was all here.

And half a dozen other hints to humor her.

Height, hometown, home phone, hereditary tree, the dossier was a haul of details. Helpful little hashtags on a big-picture Angela couldn’t bring to heel. Here she was, that heretic. Hopping city to city hatching schemes born of hatred. Hubris, really. Jealousy for Angela’s own high-standing and huge progression as a hero of Overwatch—Ha!

How horrid.

She wouldn’t have it.

Hence her actions. Hence her downward haste. Hence— everything.

Proof inhibited her to hustle Jesse for more.

He gave her hazy, hard-to-see-but-enough-to-assume-photos. Heisted snapshots of her; Moira. He gave her hacked into home and hotel security cameras to help hydrate her hurried excuses for insured safety.

“Please,” She’d hushed.

He’d sighed.

Now, her finger could hover, holding tabs open to hissing streams of footage. A constant feed of habitual scheduling at her beck and call. She checked, in-between handouts for agents and half-finished reports for heinous viruses, she checked, wholly rearranging her schedule for O’Deorains.

It was almost hypnosis, having her phone alerted with happy-little rings to inform how and when Moira headed home each day. Or hosting a slew of data on the hither and thither of the woman’s social and hospitable life.

It became a holy ritual, a habit, a hang-up, watching a red-haired, hallowed figure, stepping from home to hash-house, hands-in-pockets, half an hour past noon, for a daily hibiscus tea. Watching and counting off the hundreds of ways to hitch the woman’s breath on it.

Hemlock, hydrangea, hellebore…

She knew her homestead like the back of her hand. Moira’s housewares became her own. Her eyes memorized the hewn furniture, the hobbled together home-laboratory, and every hidden hearth where the woman might hide her hatched schemes. Her hunt for clues ended up a homework assignment of a handwritten home catalog. Herringbone blazers, hair products, favored hardware; Every handsome detail a humble addition to her growing registry. She had her dinner when Moira had it, hummed songs she heard from Moira’s home radio, and held a session of hand drawing anatomy on the hour Moira helped herself to a shower. It was her own personal habitat. A Herbalist's terrarium replaced with a hasty camera collection and a hollow-cheeked, harsh-angled woman.  

It was, honestly, obviously, vehemently, in the name of her well-being.

Why would it not be?

Wondering endlessly at the wealth and well-to-do of the non-doctor only came with the concern of her welfare. She was up-to-no-good. Wouldn’t anyone else want to keep a watchful eye on one who seemed so untrustworthy?

Which is why when the Wintersession Conference came up, Angela didn’t wrestle with ethics buying her ticket, despite having no work to warrant it. It simply wasn’t a chance she wanted to waste.

Especially when she witnessed a tracked credit card transact a similar purchase.

Perfect.

And poignant. Moira was to pitch her own publication. How pointedly similar to her own. How unprofessional. How predictable. Riding on the pretty coattails of her own work and pretending not to. Pathetic.

Taking the flight out, she made it a point not to mention her petty, if perfectly understandable, ulterior motives. It wasn’t much of a plan, anyway, just a predetermination of likely provocations that might push the truth to the forefront of her current predisposed position.

Nothing more than that. Plainly. Obviously.

That’s all it was.

At first.

Pamphlets guided her through picture-perfect and peer-filled passages in the palaver building. Fellow practitioners and doctors had impromptu powwows whilst rooms held prepared speeches.

She punched into only one, picked specifically, ears perked at the mention of her perpetrator's name.  She plotted to come in late, preserving a seat in the back, the pitch of shadow, where her pronounced features would be eclipsed by others. A place to preserve her privacy as she poached the program.

Moira presented on a platform, prattling in her particular cadence, each pronunciation adding to her despise. Palpable prejudice grew in her as she perceived the image, the picture, the perception the woman created of herself. Sharp pinched face and prominent shoulders, pillared on a pelvis that seemed almost perverse in its placement. Moira was appealing, pretty. Pulchritudinous. A pernicious poison wrapped in a pleasing physiology that just pushed Angela to a passionate hatred.

When the procedural propositions were ended, Moira was pariahed. Partners and listeners peeled from her path, pairing off to prevent speaking to her. A pitiful portrayal of what Angela had already perceived. No matter how far her prodigy had taken her, it was plain to see that it proved nothing in the politics of the world of doctoral and scientific pHDs.

It was precisely what she needed. Poker-faced and purposeful, she followed close to the patented pace of the redhead, sure to keep the pomegranate locks in her peripherals.

It was policy. Promise. You have to understand the point-of-view! This was personal. A passive plan to prevent a plausible case of PTSD. Moira was power hungry. Surreptitious. This would peg her for the poor pursuer she was. Angela would prove it and hand her to the police with a plea for better control.

It was supposed to be easy. Simple. She only wanted to see where she was headed anyway.

Another annotated speech, and another.

Accompanying each other but unaware, they attended each addressed appointment in close accessibility. Moira would adhere to the program, appearing in the first row, while Angela assumed a seat like an extension of her shadow. Attention on her as her attention was taken.

Moira was a good actor. Adaptable. Aware? No, absurd. Any indication of Angela’s lacking absence was abstract.

Unless. Unless this activity had been the accessory to the entire act itself.

Could Moira have adjusted her agenda knowing Angela would attain this amount of agency?

Anxiety adopted her alertness. Angered and annoyed her.

Angela followed after her antagonist and assessed her own tracks at the same time.

And when the assignments ran out and Moira left the affair for her own accommodations, Angela followed only to acquire a good vantage of the area outside.

At first.

Minutes flew by in a flurry of fluctuating fears. For if this was all apart of that frivolous, fucking, fraud’s plan from the beginning then Moira was already following Angela as she followed her.

This could all be a fictitious, fabricated, fucking event. A freak-show or a fairy-tale of fake doctors and fake scientists with fake speeches and fake findings. Yes—yes, yes, yes!

Figures! She hadn’t in fact, found _herself_ featured, had she? Nor had she felt the need to check in on rooms Moira hadn’t frequented. They could have been empty.  For all she knew, the invite could have been the first figure in this whole farce.

Fuck!

Overwatch favored a safe follow-through for situations like this. There were procedural failsafes, fool-proof standard steps ingrained in air-tight training. For instance, policy found phone calls for fellow operatives to be the first requirement, the second a fallback of further actions until defense and refuge could be formed.

But Angela wasn’t some fucking fixture. And she had few facts to follow-up her inference that didn’t sound like fiction. It was obviously a fight she’d have to fix herself.

Confronting the cause, casually, was out of the question. Moira had conspired this entire conference and could probably control the outcome. Anything she could cobble together now as a plan was most likely calculated. Concluded.

She was on a chessboard pre-created by the cunt, dammit, a metaphorical canary caught by the cat. She’d need to cast her own checkmate.

Yes, she could corner her before the non-doctor could comprehend it.

Of course, contriving this entire circumstance meant that currently, O’Deorain’s coastal condominium was... unoccupied.

She called for the closest airport, taking a car from the downtown conference for a one-way ticket to Clifden, Ireland. The capital of Connemara. A quaint, 12-hr cross-country flight made with only her carry-on and all of her consignment cash.

It was certainly a quick but conclusive plan and she felt accomplished even as she coined cab after cab, concocting pathways through copied GPS reports. Because the doctor still had a couple more conference days to accrue before coming home, didn’t she? And Moira probably considered Angela still on the chase, close by. All according to plan.

She needed no assistance accessing entry to the abode. Acquiring the key was as easy as acting out habits she had admired for months now; adjusting the antique placard to administer the password for the spare, as Moira had done every time. Easy. As if she’d actually been invited. A trusted acquaintance.

It was empty, obviously, but actually full of extra information. Accommodations and accouterments she hadn’t exactly seen yet. Erroneous spaces in the acute blind spots of her hidden cameras. Fuzzy portraits now adjusted into focus, her own eyes now an aperture above those abstract accounts of watching Moira sleep, eat and exist through digital auditors. She picked up each and every one, eyeing and evaluating as if to finally find the eventual answer, the inevitable evidence to expel all the alibis up until now.

All she uncovers is insignificant. Framed editorials, family photos, and etchings of scientific illustrations. Apparently, she’s not so irresponsible or imprecise. Everything is empty of insidious intent. Maybe in the case that this exact investigation might happen.

She ventures further inside, interested even, to finally explore the environment her enemy called home.

Every step is intentional. Angela enters the living room with an easy familiarity, avoiding the sharp edges of the end table to encircle the couch and coffee table. Everything here smells like some sort of essential oil. Artemisia, maybe, or agarwood. Both. It comes from the inside of the encasings that hang on the wall. Extracts of flowers and specimens. Examples. An imposing art sense that makes her roll her eyes.

The hallway towards the bedroom is elevated, an extravagant rug turning to the uneven stones of an eccentric Irish ancestral home that would invite charm if it didn’t belong to the most unethical person she’d ever met.

The bedroom is only a little more erratic. It looks more improvised, anyway, as if Moira had counted on Angela eventually coming in like this. Clothing is arranged in impromptu ways, as if the owner left rather impulsively, or maybe excitedly. A bra here, a pair of slacks there.

Angela picks up each piece, peering in pockets and emptying out anything she finds. She slips receipts and innocuous looking notes into the insides of her own bag. A growing stash of personal effects to inquire about later.

It’s all an act. All a scripted act to prove her innocence. Almost as if the absence of evidence is evidence itself. Just as Moira had performed, played, practiced the precise role she needed to in front of the cameras, she even goes as far as to exchange her everyday living for an illegitimate ensemble of fake props.

Fake. It’s all fucking fake.

Angela flings open drawers, filtering through falsities; worn out books, saved coupons, empty tubes of lipstick, spare change, and handwritten grocery lists. A fucking collection of figures, another fastidious facet of this fucking experiment being played on her. Fantastic!

There had to be one forsaken thing that would find this fucking bitch guilty for doing exactly what Angela had figured out she had been doing. Following her! Fanning flames with harassment of a figurehead she envied, obviously, and finding it funny, or her foolish.

Pulling fast, she flung the draw from its rails, contents falling all over the floor. Angela fumes, leaving the mess to find herself back in the hall, hands trailing across the walls down to the left, forcing open an office door she remembers from the late night feeds.

It’s a fine-tuned thing. A study with scientific fixtures and tools she freely topples over, frustrated with being so fucking careful, she fusses with papers and files, upturning folders to find anything, anything, anything. Something with her fucking name on it, or a fountain of photos of herself in polaroids, with her face circled in red ink.

She finds nothing and screams, feeling sick. It’s fake, she knows it. She can see that slimy smirk in the recesses of her mind, can sense a snake from a mile away. Serpentine and sadistic. She’d been caught in a freak show since December when the woman shook her hand and stole her soul.

The house shakes.

A sound rolls through the wall and she hears the gates outside shift and squeal.

Shit.

Someone’s here? No?

Since she’d had McCree secretly set up surveillance Moira had no visitors. Colleagues, friends, and suitors are sorely missing from the woman's life, probably for good reason. _She knows this._ If she knows the surnames of O’Deorains parents, she certainly knows there isn’t even a sympathetic neighbor that solicits this place.

It could only be _her._

Shit!

Angela seizes the door, swinging it open to scramble back down the hallway. She hides, sitting, rolling, shimmying the size of her body into the space below the bed, where the sheets shiver from her breath.

There’s no surge or swiftness in the slow sounds of the front door stripping from its frame. It’s scary, even. A sort of nostalgia from studiously watching still videos of the same sequence but at a cybernetic distance.

She can picture the shape and stance of Moira’s silhouette as she enters even though she can’t see her from this spot. She imagines the simple sway of Moira’s hips as she slips off her coat and shucks off her bags. She knows each item will share a hook from their routine spot on the wall.

But she has time, doesn’t she? Moira will set her shoes aside and start her night by setting up her kettle to steam. If she’s silent, she could sneak into the shower and slide open the window to steal away.

Unless Moira’s come home early because she suspected this would happen. Summoned by a sprung trap.

Angela swallows. It’s hot, and her skin is beginning to sweat. It isn’t very spacious and she fears she could be stuck here if—

The sound of a luggage wheel screeches down the hall before the door slides open.

She stills her breathing.

Sharp pointed shoes snap the plastic of the suitcase, a sound that she shudders at. It’s tossed, weight sundering the bed to dip softly. The scant space between her skin and the mattress gets smaller.

It’s seconds before anything else, and when the shadows of her suspect twist and turn as if to leave, she believes she’s safe. But they stop.

She can hear Moira breathe. She imagines she can smell her, actually. The soapy sting of hand sanitizer and cigarettes. A smoker. Black slims she keeps in the lining of her labcoat. _She knows this._

There are no words. Moira says nothing. But her long strides carry her to the stray drawer, sprawled upside down on the stones of her floor, where it’s contents lay scattered.

She leaves. But it’s sudden and scary. Loud snaps of hallway lights skittering to life as she scales down her hallway toward her open office, ransacked and stripped.

She twists, shifting, hoping to simply leave, but a glimpse of red from the sliver in the door and she stops, swallowing, staring, as Moira enters once more, swearing.

“A dhéanann se?”

And to her absolute despise, Moira shucks open the bathroom door before slamming it shut with a lock.

She considers running. She could. It’s a straight shot from her spot to the front door. But she’s stricken with fear and suspicion. Because this is also the plan isn’t it?

Yes, how silly— of course! Obviously. It’s another scripted scene. Why else would she so suddenly return if not to set her up like some stupid science experiment.

She sneers at nothing, stowing away her anger. So be it. If Moira could scheme then so could she.

The shower turns on.

Another obvious suggestion that Moira isn’t at all what she seems. Upset and worried is a screen she can wear. A sign to set Angela off in the exact way she wants.

Seconds go by. Some minutes maybe.

Soft tingles spread through the skin of her legs. Asleep in their specific angles.

She hears nothing but the endless spattering of water on ceramic.

She feels something like an hour settle into her body. Her breathing grows steady and it isn’t until the water finally stops that she blinks back a weariness akin to sleep.

“Yes.” Someone says. Moira. Right. Of course. Her stalker. “To the left, at the end.”

Is she talking to someone?

A stampede of noise erupts and shocks her, she bangs her head against the side of the bed, and shouts permeate the house as people begin rushing inside.

She tries to keep quiet, but the slam of the bedroom door opening and the crowd of shoes is startling.

A swarm of police. She knows it by the shouting commands, the soldier-like tone that reminds her of the service agents she sees at Overwatch. 

“Sir! Clear—”

“Moving in!” 

She’s grabbed.

“Suspect found!”

The hands on her shoulders drag her like a sack from the hidden space. She fights, screams. They shove her to her knees and set flashlights in her eyes.

“She’s a snake!” Angela screams, striving for some semblance of sense. “Can’t you see how simple it is, she’s stalking me!” 

The strangers don’t stop, struggling to handcuff her fists as she tries to separate from them, her heels scrambling on the floor.

The bathroom door slips open, where she spots the flash of sanguine locks and eyes like steel.

“She’s the one, stop! See? Can’t you see— she’s been stalking me—”

“Dr. Ziegler...?”

Moira’s face is the essence of surprised, shifting a cell phone from the shell of her ear to stare, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. A serene image of stunned silence that has her fucking seething.

She snarls likes she's been smacked in the face. What deception! A sordid symbol of this whole scheme coming to its summit. How dare she.

“You Snake! Sie sanken! Du hast es gestholen!”

Her shoes drag down the hall as they escort her out. She catches the sorry sight of herself in the mirror beside the side closet. And she sees her face red and splotchy, tears streaming through her shaken shouts.

_Speigal._

 

* * *

 

It’s Gabriel, who comes for her.

She’s grateful, really. Given the option, it’s exactly who she’d have chosen. The police gift them an empty interrogation room, but they don’t take away the handcuffs.

The Blackwatch commander is grave-faced but gunless. A good sign, even if she doesn’t understand herself for expecting such a grim consequence.

“Oh, Angela.” It’s a gross, sad thing to say, and she looks anywhere but towards him. The tone of his voice like the gavel of a judge. “I wish you’d come to me.”

“You don’t understand.”

The chair across from her groans as he pulls it out.

“I do. Jesse made sure I did before I had to take a chopper out to the goddamn Irish coast.”

“Then you must know she’s been—”

“Angela.”

Gabe’s eyes greet her with nothing but a cold warning, one she heeds, flushes at, feels heat gather at her throat because of.

“All this…. Stuff. Her stealing your research, following you to Europe, tailing you, taking pictures of you or writing down your schedule—”

She holds her breath, ready to gasp in anticipation.

“—none of that is accounted for. There’s nothing that shows she’s been tailing you. She actually seems pretty confused to have seen you, Angela Ziegler of Overwatch, under her bed.”

“Don’t say it like that! It’s not like that, we met, she sent a letter—”

“That I did find. Or Jesse did.” Gabriel shakes his head. “A letter to cite you for some paper she wrote, and an invitation to dinner. Normal stuff, Angela.”

He looks awkward, gawkish even, an irregular look for the usual gruffness of  Reyes. His hands grab a thick folder, sliding it across the metal to her. It spills out.

“Now you— they found you with a list of her everyday agenda for the last two months. You have pictures of her from unauthorized cameras inside her home, you stole items from her bedroom, Angela, this—”

She quivers, staring down at her things, her findings, feeling gruesomely small and also glaringly justified.

“This is really bad.”

“She’s been following me!”  
  
“It’s not gonna be easy covering this up." He sighs. “I'm worried about you. You're going to make yourself sick.”

“I think it’s okay to be a little sick sometimes.” She says, remembering the words in the recesses of her mind. 

“Not like this, doc.”

He does fix it though.

At first.

They’re stuck in the tiny Irish police station for almost a whole day.

She never sees O’Deorain.

But she leaves with Gabriel Reyes, hands-free, tucked under his arm and sequestered into a helicopter. The oceans between them and Gibraltar seem endless. A roiling thick that mirrors, _mirrors,_ her tumultuous thoughts.

She isn’t sure what strings have been pulled to have her scot-free, and when she questions it, Gabriel just shakes his head. “You’re not gonna like it.”

She thinks better than to pry.

Jesse and Mei are the first to greet her on the lawns of their helipad. The former looking guilty and apologetic. He tries to say sorry for his obvious snitching, but she can’t hear him over the rutter of the helicopter, and just shakes her head and pats his shoulder.

The latter greets her with concern. Another conspiratorial face of someone who regretted their non-actions maybe. Angela lets it go.

Her office has been turned over. It’s subtler than the job she’d done back in Clifden. The folder full of secret pictures, cropped images, and saved faculty photos is gone. The camera feeds are empty. Even the email stubs from her tickets to the winter conference are deleted, erased, non-existent.

And after a long sleep, and another long work day of checking through Overwatch files and filling out bloodwork records, Angela thinks it’s probably for the best.

At first.

It’s a deal. A cut deal. A delicate transaction to deter any sort of judicial detention. It makes sense, even if she didn’t like it.

Despised it.

It’s weeks until she even realizes. Until Gabriel detains her on a sudden detached meeting about mission debriefings. To warn her. To dissuade her.

“It’s also to help me, help you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If what you say is true, then it’s best to keep her close so I can watch her.”

“Who?”

The deception isn’t in her face until it is, a distinct shadow that stands so many feet above her, a dismissive figure that stops directly in front of her as she leaves Gabriel for her own office and then there— dammit. 

She’s dumbstruck.

Deceived.

Destroyed.

The doctor drives the gap between them to a dirty little inch that makes her drop her back against the wall.

O’Deorain breathes and Angela smells the deep aroma of those damned oils and desterilized chemicals. “I can’t say anyone’s ever given me any kind of attention let alone that much.”

“You’re a snake.” She spits.  
  
“You’re still on about that.” Moira’s eyes spark with a shocked surprise that doesn't falter her feral fucking smile. A hand drags up the wall, directing spinal shivers in her that Moira’s nails seem to cause, steepling as they do in a sequential sound of snapping against the cement. “If you want the truth of it, you’re the one who frightened me,”

Steel eyes stare at her through slicing strings of red hair and suddenly Angela realizes that _this_ is the start. This is the seemingly endless sequence of--

A shift, slivers of silver flash in the secret section of Moira’s sanctioned coat to sift free a shaft of paper. A snapshot. A secret stilled image of Angela’s own listless features; stamped, systematically with the second in time it was certified. The soft hours of the start of last week's shift. She’s sure of it as she’s sure the image shows the same clothes she’d picked that day. The same expression of speculation she remembers sporting.

She stares at herself as Moira whispers through an easy smile. “At first.”   


**Author's Note:**

> I will never write like this ever again. 
> 
> I listened to "Unhealthy Obsession" by the Blake Robinson Synthetic Orchestra on repeat for this and challenged myself to portray paranoia through purposeful prose instead of exposition to prove I could make the audience feel anxiety. Dunno if it actually worked but it was fun/hard.


End file.
